Interpreting Temporal Relations between Eventualities: An Examination of an Inferential Approach

Abstract

An essential part of text interpretation involves calculating temporal relations between eventualities contained in discourse. Many previous studies have adopted the concept of reference points to model the anaphoric nature of tense in natural language. An inferential approach offers an alternative viewpoint by asserting that the calculation of temporal relations can be achieved through the rhetorical relations that hold between eventualities without needing reference points. In this paper, we examine an inferential approach by using it to analyze a part of the text of Haruki Murakami’s novel “1Q84”. Findings of the study include the following: (1) while an inference-based approach can work for sentences, processing phrases or clauses with the method is difficult. (2) Rhetorical relations do not necessarily lead to temporal relations. (3) Information obtained through reasoning may contradict the compositional meaning of the text. These limitations suggest that an inferential approach cannot always be used as an alternative to reference points.